The Heisman Memorial Trophy (usually known colloquially as the Heisman Trophy or The Heisman), is awarded annually to the most outstanding player in college football in the United States whose performance best exhibits the pursuit of excellence with integrity. Winners epitomize great ability combined with diligence, perseverance, and hard work. It is presented by the Heisman Trophy Trust in early December before the postseason bowl games.

The award was created by the Downtown Athletic Club in 1935 to recognize "the most valuable [college football] player east of the Mississippi."[1][2] After the death in October 1936 of the Club's athletic director, John Heisman, the award was named in his honor and broadened to include players west of the Mississippi.[3][4] Heisman had been active in college athletics as a football player; a head football, basketball, and baseball coach; and an athletic director. It is the oldest of several overall awards in college football, including the Maxwell Award, Walter Camp Award, and the AP Player of the Year. The Heisman and the AP Player of the Year honor the most outstanding player, while the Maxwell and the Walter Camp award recognizes the best player, and the Archie Griffin Award recognizes the most valuable player. The most recent winner of the Heisman Trophy is University of Alabama running back Derrick Henry.

Trophy design

The trophy itself, designed by sculptor Frank Eliscu, is modeled after Ed Smith, a leading player in 1934 for the now-defunct New York University football team.[5] The trophy is made out of cast bronze, is 13.5inches (34.3cm) tall and weighs 25 pounds (11.3kg).[5]

Eliscu had asked Smith, his former George Washington High School classmate, to pose for a commissioned sculpture of a football player. Smith did not realize until 1982 that the sculpture had become the Heisman Trophy. The Downtown Athletic Club presented Smith with a Heisman Trophy of his own in 1985.

From its inception in 1935, the statue was cast by Dieges & Clust in New York (and later Providence, Rhode Island) until 1980, when Dieges and Clust was sold to Herff Jones. For a time until at least 2008, the statues were cast by Roman Bronze Works in New York.[6]

Selection

Originally only players east of the Mississippi were eligible, but since 1936 all football players in all divisions of college football are eligible for the award, though winners usually represent Division I Football Bowl Subdivision schools.[7]

There are three categories of persons eligible to vote for the award winner:

Sports journalists: Heisman.com states that sports journalists are to be the determinants of the award since they are "informed, competent, and impartial."[8] There are 870 media voters: 145 voters from each of six regions.

Previous Heisman winners (and in cases where an underclassman wins the award and remains in school to play, a prior winner may also be a current candidate). According to Heisman.com there are currently 57 prior winners eligible to vote[8] and, thus, 57 potential votes (a prior winner is not required to vote and does not lose his voting privileges by not voting).

Fans: As the Premier Partner of the Heisman Trophy Nissan has a vote and gives this to the fans. Fan voting done through a survey collected by ESPN on NissanHeismanHouse.com. This constitutes one Heisman vote.

Each voter identifies three selections, ranking them in order. Each first-place selection is awarded three points. Each second-place selection is awarded two points. Each third-place selection is awarded one point. Voters must make three selections and cannot duplicate a selection, else the ballot is invalid and none of the selections count.[8]

The accounting firm Deloitte is responsible for the tabulation of votes, which has moved almost exclusively to online voting since 2007.[8]

Notable achievements

Nile Kinnick of Iowa was the only Heisman Trophy winner (1939) to have a stadium named after him. In 1972, the University of Iowa renamed its football complex Kinnick Stadium. Nile Kinnick is also the only winner to lose his life in military service of the United States. He went down piloting an F4F Wildcat from the deck of USS Lexington (CV-16).

Doc Blanchard was the first junior to win the Heisman Trophy when he led Army to the national title in 1945.

Paul Hornung was the only player to win the Heisman Trophy as a player for a losing team. He took the award at Notre Dame 1956, when the Irish finished a dismal 2–8 on the year.

Ernie Davis was the first African American player to win the Heisman Trophy. He attended Syracuse University was drafted first overall in 1962, yet never played a game in the NFL as he was diagnosed with leukemia and died in 1963.

Terry Baker was the only player to win the Heisman Trophy and play in the Final Four in the NCAA Basketball Tournament in the same school year (1962–63).

University success

In addition to personal statistics, team achievements play a heavy role in the voting – a typical Heisman winner represents a team that had an outstanding season and was most likely in contention for the national championship or a major conference championship at some point in that season. Although the University of Chicago abandoned Division I football in 1939, and is now a Division III school, and Yale and Princeton are now Division I FCS, all three schools were considered major football programs at the time their players won the award.

Besides Griffin winning consecutive Heismans at Ohio State, three other programs had two different players win the Heisman Trophy in consecutive years: Yale (1936–37), Army (1945–46), and Southern California (USC) (2004–05, though Reggie Bush voluntarily forfeited his 2005 award in September 2010 and sent the trophy back to the Heisman Trust[15]). With an earlier win in 2002, the USC program actually had three different winners within four years.

Class and age

Texas A&M quarterback Johnny Manziel became the first freshman to win the Heisman in 2012. The following year, at 19 years and 342 days old, Florida State quarterback Jameis Winston became the youngest Heisman Trophy winner as a freshman. No sophomore won the Heisman in its first 72 years, at which point there were three consecutive sophomore winners: Tim Tebow in 2007, followed by Sam Bradford and Mark Ingram, Jr. Only a few juniors have won the award, starting with the eleventh winner in 1945, Doc Blanchard.

The oldest and youngest Heisman winners ever both played for Florida State. The oldest, Chris Weinke, was 28 years old when he won in 2000; he spent six years in minor league baseball before enrolling at FSU. The youngest winner is 2013 recipient Jameis Winston, at the age of 19 years and 11 months.

The 2008 Heisman press conference was held at the Sports Museum of America in New York. There was an entire gallery with the museum-attraction dedicated to the Trophy, including the making of the Trophy, the history of the DAC, and information on John Heisman and all the Trophy's winners. There was also a dedicated area celebrating the most recent winner, and the opportunity for visitors to cast their vote for next winner (with the top vote-winner receiving 1 official vote on their behalf). The Sports Museum of America closed permanently in February 2009.

History

The award was first presented in 1935 by the Downtown Athletic Club (DAC) in New York City, a privately owned recreation facility located on the lower west side near the later site of the former World Trade Center. It was first known simply as the DAC Trophy. The first winner, Jay Berwanger, was drafted by the Philadelphia Eagles but declined to sign for them. He never played professional football for any team. In 1936, John Heisman died and the trophy was renamed in his honor. Larry Kelley, the second winner of the award, was the first man to win it as the "Heisman Trophy."[17]

The first African American player to win the Heisman was Syracuse's Ernie Davis, who never played a snap in the NFL. He was diagnosed with leukemia shortly after winning the award and died in 1963. In 1966, former Florida Gators quarterback Steve Spurrier gave his Heisman trophy to the university president Dr. J. Wayne Reitz so that the award could be shared by Florida students and faculty.[5] The gesture caused Florida's student government to raise funds to purchase a replacement trophy for Spurrier.[5] Since then, the Downtown Athletic Club has issued two trophies to winners, one to the individual and a replica to his college.[5]

Several Heisman trophies have been sold over the years. O. J. Simpson's 1968 trophy was sold in February 1999 for $230,000 as part of the settlement of the civil trial in the O. J. Simpson murder case.[5] Yale end Larry Kelley sold his 1936 Heisman in December 1999 for the sum of $328,110 to settle his estate and to provide a bequest for his family.[5]Charles White's 1979 trophy first sold for $184,000 and then for nearly $300,000 in December 2006 to help pay back federal income taxes.[5] The current record price for a Heisman belongs to the trophy won by Minnesota halfback Bruce Smith in 1941 at $395,240.[5]Paul Hornung sold his Heisman for $250,000 to endow student scholarships for University of Notre Dame students from his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky.[5] Eliscu's original plaster cast sold at Sotheby's for $228,000 in December 2005.[5]

Television coverage

The presentation of the Heisman trophy was not broadcast on television until 1977.[18] Before 1977, the presentation of the award was not televised as a stand-alone special, but rather as a quick in-game feature. The ceremony usually aired on ABC as a feature at halftime of the last major national telecast (generally a rivalry game) of the college football season. ABC essentially showed highlights since the award was handed out as part of an annual weeknight dinner at the Heisman Club. At the time, the event had usually been scheduled for the week following the Army–Navy Game.

Controversy and politics

Regional bias controversy

A number of critics have expressed concern about the unwritten rules regarding player position and age, as noted above.

Over the years, there has been substantial criticism of a regional bias, suggesting that the Heisman balloting process has ignored West Coast players.[19] At present, the Pac-12 Conference (Pac-12, formerly Pac-10, formerly Pac-8), represents 12 of the 77 teams (roughly 16%) in the Automatic Qualifying conferences. The Heisman can, and has been, presented to players from other conferences, but a random sample over a long period of time might suggest that Pac-10/12 players might win 16% of the Heisman awards.[20] In the 20 seasons between 1981 (Marcus Allen) and 2002 (Carson Palmer), not a single Pacific-10 Conference or other West Coast player won the Heisman Trophy. Three Southern California (USC) players have won the trophy in the early years of the 21st century and two won it subsequent to Palmer. Although Terry Baker, quarterback from Oregon State, won the trophy in 1962, and Gary Beban from UCLA won in 1967, no non-USC player from the West Coast had won between Stanford's Jim Plunkett in 1970 and Oregon'sMarcus Mariota in 2014. Other than Mariota's win, the closest since Plunkett's wins have been Toby Gerhart, Andrew Luck, and Christian McCaffrey, Stanford players who were second in the Heisman balloting each year from 2009–11 and 2015.

The West Coast bias discussion usually centers on the idea that East Coast voters see few West Coast games, because of television coverage contracts, time zone differences, or cultural interest. At Heisman-projection Web site StiffArmTrophy.com, commentator Kari Chisholm claims that the Heisman balloting process itself is inherently biased:

"For Heisman voting purposes, the nation is divided into six regions—each of which get 145 votes. Put another way, each region gets exactly 16.67 percent of the votes. However, each region does not constitute an even one-sixth of the population. Three regions (Far West, Midwest, and Mid-Atlantic) have larger populations than 16.67% of the national population; and three have less (Northeast, South, and Southwest). In fact, the Far West has the greatest population at 21.2% of the country and the Northeast has the least at 11.9%."[21]

Nullification of 2005 award

In 2010 University of Southern California athletic director Pat Haden announced the university would return its replica of the 2005 Heisman Trophy due to NCAA sanctions requiring the university to dissociate itself from Reggie Bush. The NCAA found that Bush had received gifts from an agent while at USC. On September 14, 2010, Bush voluntarily forfeited his title as a Heisman winner. The next day, the Heisman Trust announced the 2005 award would remain vacated and removed all mention of the 2005 award from its official website.[22] Bush eventually returned the trophy itself to the Heisman Trust in 2012.[23]

Critical responses from the national media were strident and varied. CBSSports.com producer J. Darin Darst opined that Bush "should never have been pressured to return the award." Kalani Simpson of Fox Sports wrote, "Nice try Heisman Trust...It's a slick move to try to wipe the slate clean." Former Football Writers Association of America president Dennis Dodd, on the other hand, decided to fictitiously award Bush's vacated 2005 award to Vince Young, the original runner-up that year. He wrote, "Since the Heisman folks won't re-vote, we did. Vince Young is the new winner of the 2005 Heisman." A Los Angeles Times piece argued that Bush's Heisman was "tainted" but lamented that the decision came five years after Bush was awarded the trophy and, therefore, four years after the expiration of Bush's term as current holder of the Heisman title.[24][25][26][27]